FEBRUARY 27 



VIII 



Among all the green things of the earth, Cynoches 

 chlorochilon ought to be in least danger of The waste 

 extermination. I believe it belongs to the ofLife 

 Orchid family, whether possessed of ornamental or 

 other merits I know not ; but I learn from the Kew 

 Bulletin (No. 4, 1909) that Dr. Scott has been at the 

 pains to count the seeds contained in a single capsule 

 of this plant, and has brought out the astonishing total 

 of close upon four millions. One may quote such 

 figures glibly enough ; but how many intellects have 

 been trained to grasp the significance of a million ? 

 Dr. Edward Tylor makes us smile at some instances 

 of primitive arithmetic, which he quotes in his fascin- 

 ating work on Primitive Culture ; as, for instance, when 

 the natives of Kamchatka were set to count, they 

 managed to get as far as twenty, by reckoning up their 

 fingers and toes, and then would ask, 'What are we to 

 do next?' School boards have rubbed into most of 

 our people a tolerably clear sense of a few thousands, 

 but most of us talk of a million without even an 

 approximate comprehension of the proportion borne 

 by one thousand thousands to more digestible numbers. 

 Practically the number of seeds produced by a single 

 plant of this Cynoches is indistinguishable from infinity 

 by one who is not a trained mathematician. 



Some of our native plants perform wonderful feats in 

 fecundity. Darwin reckoned the contents of a single 

 capsule of the common spotted orchis (0. maculata) 

 at about 6200 seeds; but he was told by F. Mueller 



